Nightingale
by Bethan Roberts
From Reaktion Books:
A melodious paean to the natural history and symbolic meaning of the most prized, poetized, and mythologized of songbirds.
The nightingale has a unique place in cultural history: the most prized of songbirds, it has inspired more poems than any other creature, and it is also the most mythologized of birds. Nightingale juxtaposes the bird of poetry, music, myth, and lore with the living bird of wood and scrubland, unpicking the entangled relationship between them. Covering a huge range of poets, musicians, artists, nature writers, and natural historians—from Aristotle, Keats, and Vera Lynn to Bob Dylan—Nightingale charts our fascination through history with this nondescript yet melodious little brown bird. It also documents the nightingale’s disappearance from British breeding grounds and the implications this has for nightingale conservation.
I’ve never seen or heard a Nightingale for myself, unfortunately. Whether you’re like me or are lucky enough to hear this renowned songster every year, this new book is the perfect introduction to the bird itself and its place in literature and the arts.
Nightingale
by Bethan Roberts
Paperback; 224 pages
Reaktion Books; November 26, 2021
ISBN: 9781789144741
$19.95
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(based in the U.K.)
Posted by Grant McCreary on January 22nd, 2022.
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